r/videogameideas

I'm currently designing a management/tycoon game as a personal project, and I'm trying to challenge the core concept before I get too attached to the design.

The basic premise is that you start small as a property owner and gradually grow into managing a much larger residential property business.

The part I'm most interested in exploring is the relationship between the business/management side and the people living in the properties.

Instead of tenants simply being an occupancy percentage or a source of monthly income, I'd like them to exist as lightweight simulated households. The player would have to think about who is living in their properties and how their management decisions affect them.

At the same time, I don't want this to become a life simulator or a game where you're constantly micromanaging individual people. The player is still fundamentally managing a property business.

The design goal is for decisions that look good financially in the short term to sometimes create problems elsewhere, while investments that make residents happier aren't necessarily always the optimal financial choice. Ideally, this creates interesting trade-offs rather than an obvious "correct" way to play.

I'm deliberately keeping some of the deeper mechanics private for now because the project is still early, but I'd really like opinions on the design direction itself.

My main question for experienced designers is:

Do you think simulated tenant households can create meaningful decisions in a management/tycoon game, or does this sound like a system that could easily turn into unnecessary micromanagement?

And if you were evaluating this concept early in development, what would be the biggest design risk you'd want to prototype/test first?

Ive been looking for a new MMO to play recently and havent found something to scratch this itch I have so ive been daydreaming of my own game and wanted to share my idea somewhere.

TLDR at the bottom

Overview

The game is based around a pretty large medieval style fantasy town. You start of in your dads cabin in the forest outside of town (tutorial island type) and learn the basics before going to the city to make it big. Kill some minor monster/animals on the way as a tutorial vibe. Then you come out of the forest and see this large beautifull city before you. The design and detail of the town is the most important thing as this is where most of the gameplay is. Think somthing like this with some fantasy elements, but not too much.

Some key elementns of the city/town are :

- A bustling town that feels alive

- City guards throughout the city

- A bunch of different npcs with small and large quests lines spread throughout.

- bad part of town with casino, brothels, bars and shady characters.

- Posh part of town where some of the later questlines can take you.

- Adventure guild where you can take bigger and bigger jobs to earn more money as you lvl.

- Some underground sewer systems with their own community and questlines.

- Gladiator style Arena for challenging other players or participating in tournamnets.

- Limited npc shops so that players can open their own shops.

- Player housing is highly focused.

Gameplay

I would want this game to be hard, as a new player you would have to train some on dummys before trying to kill a boar with a stick for example. I would also like to punish dying hard by resetting all combat levels on death or something similar, except for if you have reached max level then it is locked in place forever. Lvling should not be too grindy and will not take too long, but death before reaching max lvl is the real challenge as the game will throw alot of stuff at you. SO far i believe endgame would be Housing and the Arena, but open to suggestions.

It would be cool if a player has done alot of adventure guild tasks and ranked up to a certain rank a NPC party invites him along to tackle different dungeons (unlocks dungeons) and he can also do that with other real players if he prefers.

Different ways to play:

- Adventure guild/dungeon/ farming monster route

- Craft or gather items and sell to shops (woodworking, fishing, farming, blacksmithing etc)

- Open your own store, buy produce from players at discount and sell to others. Competition between store and thay have rent to pay so have to be profitable.

- Casino gambling

- Questing

- Win tournaments and duels in arena.

There should be many different ways to play the game so replayability is high and dying is not the end of the world.

Bonus idea to keep things interesting

There could be several ways to end up on the wrong side of the law and this would give you the option to complete the assasin quest line (to repay your debts or clear you name for example).

This quest line would train you in the way of the assasin and the final goal would be to assasinate one high level player that is closing in on max level.

Assasins cant be seen by city guards and cant just one shot players so it is difficult but they will be gives the tools to accomplish the job.

TL:DR

A game that takes place in a huge medieval fantasy city where you try to make a name for yourself as a merchant, adventurer, craftsman and a bunch of other proffesions. Stores can be player driven. The shady parts of the city have casinos, brothels and thieves. Gladiator style arena to challenge players, watch tournaments etc. Endgame is reaching max level, housing, fancy gear etc (so far atleast). Very open game with many different ways to "win". Great game for RP. The game is not easy and having the correct lvls, gear and skills for fights is important. punish deaths heavily.

If you read this far, thank you! Even if no one reads this I just needed to get this out there as i have been thinking about it for a long time.